U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was not premeditated, directly contradicting top Libyan officials who say the attack was planned in advance.“Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo,” Rice told me this morning on “This Week.”
“In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated,” Rice said, referring to protests in Egypt Tuesday over a film that depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud. Protesters in Cairo breached the walls of the U.S. American Embassy, tearing apart an American flag.“We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to – or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo,” Rice said. “And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons… And it then evolved from there.”

So, "OUR" best assessment (not sure who "our" is) suggests it was a small group of people...who wanted to copy what had happened in Cairo...where they simply breeched the wall and tore up an American flag....

Yes, that small group who just happened to have with them automatic weapons, RPGs and well, everyone always has mortar rounds and a mortar tube......oh, and they just happened to have the exact location plotted from a position they spontaneously found.....and were able to lay in accurate and heavy in direct fire barrage down onto the US Consulate that was in a secret location.....if the people around there walked around everyday and all day with those weapons.....why wasn't there more security?

So, is this what the Obama WH told her to say...or are there people on the ground who lied about the attack? We already know what happened....from the reports received, that attack was anything but a small group of protestors trying to copy the Cairo attack.....that they just happened across the secret facility....that they just happened to have military grade weapons....they just happened to have RPGs...and let's not forget the Mortar and the rounds used...

Well, we know all the Obama supporters will believe this...the LIB controlled media will spin this 24/7....that much we do know is true...

Quote:

Rice’s account directly contradicts that of Libyan President Mohamed Yousef El-Magariaf, who said this weekend that he had “no doubt” the attack was pre-planned by individuals from outside Libya.
“It was planned, definitely, it was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their arrival,” told CBS News.

Quote:

“But the president has been very clear. The protection of American personnel and facilities is and will remain our top priority,” Rice added. “That’s why we’ve reinforced our presence in Tripoli and elsewhere.”

Well, except the Sudan where we requested to do so and were denied.....the only thing the Sudanese wanted to hear was when the next US Aid check was due....

She also added.......Rice said the FBI is examining the attack, saying their investigation “will tell us with certainty what transpired.”

Re: Is the US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice lying or was she lied to?

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Libyan Weapons Arming Regional Conflicts
By Mel Frykberg

Ridwan, a former rebel fighter from Tripoli. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS.

TRIPOLI, Sep 2 2012 (IPS) - In the aftermath of Libya’s revolution, Libyan fighters and weapons are flooding areas of conflict in neighbouring countries, according to local fighters and officials in several countries.

Libya’s still heavily armed militias continue to sell their weapons on the black market directly to foreign militias from war-ridden countries, or to arms-dealers from third countries who then sell them on to warring factions, they say.

“All of the militias are involved in selling weapons. There is no law in Libya, still no functioning government, and the country’s security forces are too weak to control the situation, so selling weapons is regarded as legal by many of the rebels,” said Ridwan, a former rebel who fought with Tripoli’s Suq Al Jumma Katiba (brigades).

“Many of the fighters got greedy following the war and believe they are entitled to compensation for the sacrifices they made for their country as they believe the government has abandoned them,” Ridwan, who did not give his last name, told IPS.

“The guys sell an AK-47 on the black market for 1,000 Libyan dinars (800 dollars). An anti-aircraft gun mounted on the back of a pickup truck goes for between 8000-10,000 LD. Most of the weapons are smuggled to the borders, especially Turkey.”

Libyan Islamist fighters are also reported to have swollen the ranks of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in their fight against Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s security forces.

The presence of Islamic extremists in North Africa’s greater Sahel region, bordered by Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger, has contributed to destabilising the area.

Tuareg rebels have declared their own state, Azawad, in the northern part of Mali, which has also been invaded by Ansar Dine, an Islamist group that works closely with an organisation known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Tuareg are an indegenous people in the Saharan region.

As fighting rages on in Mali, reportedly supplemented by Libyan weapons, a number of foreigners have been kidnapped.

Mali’s ambassador to South Africa, Balladji Diakite, told IPS following the kidnapping of a South African national, that “heavily armed Mali gunmen returning from the Libyan war, where they fought with former president Muammar Gaddafi’s die-hard loyalists, were most likely behind the abductions.”

Dr David Zounmenou from the African Conflict Prevention Programme at The Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa, concurred with Diakite.

“The Sahel region is awash with weapons and those returned Mali gunmen. Many of them Tuaregs who fought with Gaddafi now have no benefactor. In addition to being broke, they also feel marginalised and politically disaffected,” Zounmenou told IPS.

Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamist militants, who are battling the government and Christians, have set up an alliance with AQIM. Weapons looted from Libya have turned up in Nigeria according to Nigeria’s defence minister, Olusola Obada.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a key AQIM leader, who operates in the southern Sahara and the Sahel belt, was recently seen in Libya buying arms.

Ridwan told IPS that it wasn’t only AQIM who had travelled to Libya on an arms-buying spree but Syrian middlemen were also visiting the country to buy arms en masse. According to a Syrian friend of Ridwan, Syrian civilians are also receiving military training from former Libyan rebels.

The latest market for Libya’s weapons appears to be Egypt’s Sinai peninsua where Egyptian security forces continue to clash with Islamists after a deadly attack last month that left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead. According to media reports the weapons include Soviet-supplied SA-24 surface-to-air missiles.

Ibrahim Al-Monaei, who has previously been arrested for smuggling weapons from Egypt to Gaza, told Al Arabiyah TV that all the weapons entering the Sinai Peninsula now are from Libya.

Saied Ateeq, an activist from the region, said that weapons imported from Libya are easily identifiable. “The new ones are of the type used in wars and not in regular clashes.”

Meanwhile, Jihadists in Syria are being supported by possibly hundreds of former Libyan rebels, many of them from Gharyan, 80km south of Tripoli. The men from Gharyan reportedly joined the ranks of the FSA after the city’s mufti Sheikh Sadik Gharyan called on Libyans to stand by their brothers in Syria.

Islamist Abdul Basset Abu Arghob, an oil engineer by profession, who commanded the Gharyan Brigades during the revolution, said he had considered going to fight in Syria.

“I decided against it in the end as there is so much work to be done in Libya. But many of my comrades have gone to fight in Syria as we believe the war there is part of a holy Jihad against bad regimes in the region and it is our duty as Muslims to help our brethren,” Abu Arghob told IPS.

One of the most prominent Libyan fighters in Syria is Mahdi Al Harati who used to command the Tripoli Revolutionary Brigades, one of the first Libyan brigades to enter Syria in August last year.

Al-Harati said that victory in Libya and the support of world organisations for Libya encouraged him to pass his experiences on for the benefit of Syrians.

“After many Syrians approached me asking for my help, I felt it was time to do more and due to the great success of the Tripoli Brigades we felt it was time to act,” said Al-Harati.

Yes, that small group who just happened to have with them automatic weapons, RPGs and well, everyone always has mortar rounds and a mortar tube......oh, and they just happened to have the exact location plotted from a position they spontaneously found...

This was discussed in the "From Twitter" thread but I'll repeat here since you've raised the questions in this thread.

The 9/11 attack on the consulate in Benghazi followed a few days after the killing of Saeed al-Shihri, an al-Qaeda commander, by a drone strike in Yemen. It was the second time this year that a US drone attack that killed an al-Qaeda commander was followed by an attack on the Benghazi consulate.

On June 6, 2012, that consulate was attacked after we killed Abu Yahya al-Libi in a drone attack in Pakistan. The June attack involved a bomb explosion after Libyan security forces spotted the attackers and warned our diplomats.

Quote:

An improvised explosive device was dropped from a passing vehicle onto the road outside the mission, in an upmarket area of central Benghazi. It exploded moments after, slightly damaging the building's gate, U.S. and Libyan officials said.

Washington had confirmed a few hours before the attack that a U.S.-operated drone had killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan-born cleric and senior al Qaeda operative, in Pakistan.

The U.S. State Department said it had asked Libyan authorities to increase security around U.S. facilities.
...
Toner said a local guard reported that an attack was underway against one of the Benghazi compound's perimeter walls and warned diplomatic staff to take cover.

The first page of comments coming from the normally leftist ABC blog are calling the Obama administration out on their lies.... Time for the biggest kool-aid drinkers to face reality. Rice lies for Obama. Some are more interested in the truth than defending their party politics. How about you SOSD forumites?

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Rice’s commentary seems to contradict all of the known facts about the timeline and details about the weaponry, knowledge of the safehouse location. It also seems strange in light of Al Queda’s statement that their attack in Libya was in retaliation to the recent death of one of their top leaders in Pakistan from American drones.

Posted by: Susan | September 16, 2012, 10:23 am 10:23 am

You’re living in Dreamland UN girl.

Posted by: Logicsgood | September 16, 2012, 10:24 am 10:24 am

This administration is in CYA mode

Posted by: Big Ed | September 16, 2012, 10:34 am 10:34 am

Democrats live in a fantasy land, unable to process actual factual information. They cling to their agenda and “progressive” bible tenets no matter WHAT happens in the real world.

Yeah, Susan…these guys just coincidentally happened to have their AK-47′s and RPG’s on them when they passed by the embassy and thought, well heck, why not? They’re only infidels. Let’s have some “spur of the moment, non-premeditated” fun, Islam style.

Posted by: Shawn P | September 16, 2012, 10:35 am 10:35 am

more lies from the Obama propaganda machine . Obama wants the USA to fail on the world stage , it’s his agenda all along.
DO THE RESEARCH YOU LIBERAL MORONS AND STOP WATCHING ABC ..IT PROPAGANDA
The hide the REAL story from you time and time again..Now we’re to believe this is over a movie ..ARE YOU ALL THAT STUPID ?

Posted by: omstrat | September 16, 2012, 10:37 am 10:37 am

More spin from the “fantasy land” that is the Obama Administration.

Realty means nothing, believe what we tell you, nothing else. The MSM will back us up.

Posted by: who cares | September 16, 2012, 10:37 am 10:37 am

Another fairy tale to go with all the others.

Posted by: John Fembup | September 16, 2012, 10:38 am 10:38 am

Excuse Ms Rice.

The Libyan President has arrested 50 people … and confirmed that it was planned months ago.

He has also stated that American was warned.

And there you sit … lying as easily as you breathe.

Can’t wait for you and your boss to be humiliated at the polls.

Posted by: McGruff | September 16, 2012, 10:38 am 10:38 am

It has become apparent to nearly everyone here in the US, that incompetence on the part of the current administration allowed this to happen. So, this statement is the beginning of the current administration’s attempt to yet again rewrite history.

Posted by: EricP | September 16, 2012, 10:39 am 10:39 am

Dear Susan, you should consider a new line of work. McDonalds is hiring, and they too have talking points, “Would you like to super-size that order?”

Posted by: Dutra | September 16, 2012, 10:39 am 10:39 am

Is Ambassador Rice any relation to Bagdad Bob?

Posted by: Robert J | September 16, 2012, 10:39 am 10:39 am

Are these people purposefully trying to mislead We the people of these United States, or are they just as inept?

From my perspective, to keep blaming a video that was out for months prior to these riots is misguided at least and complete lunacy at worst. It would appear that if they keep blaming the video, more people will blame the video, then the admin will have the ammo needed to squelch religious and political free speech.

Posted by: tiny tim | September 16, 2012, 10:39 am 10:39 am

Its apparent the Obama administration has their head in the sand. Is that fair to the American people and our men and women in uniform?

Posted by: Dana | September 16, 2012, 10:41 am 10:41 am

liar, liar, your pants are on fire.

Posted by: danshanteal | September 16, 2012, 10:41 am 10:41 am

Is this administration in big time CYA mode. I think we’ll see that in fact there was credible and actionable intelligence days before the attack but obama was too busy trying to convince Americans he’s not piloting the Titanic. obama needs to be indicted and tried for the murder of an American ambassador. All reports are that Ambassador Stevens was a good and decent man, his one flaw was that he listened to and trusted obama who sent him like a lamb to slaughter. I hope this serves as a warning those all those of you that listen to and trust obama, watch you back.

Posted by: Michael | September 16, 2012, 10:42 am 10:42 am

Even Democrats have said it was a planned attack. Sen Levin said you dont go to a spontaneous protest with RPGs

Posted by: Bobloblaw | September 16, 2012, 10:42 am 10:42 am

susan lies and contradictions are common place with these people but the msm continually guives them a pass! as for libya the ambassador disarmed the guards by not allowing loaded weopens so not only were they over run they were defenseless. also with the libyan guard actually joining in on the protest it was pretty much a slaughter. unless you have lived in the middle east you have no clue and it appears obama either the fantical life they lead. i was there in the early 80′s long before iraq and iran, when those two countries were locked in a war of attrition sitting at a hotel pool in the uae drinking beers at night watching the light show they provided with howitzer shots at each other. we have in one year set back democarcy in these countries by 50 years or more and radicalized the whole peninsula! a parting treat to our kids future by the clown and chief!

Posted by: cb6352 | September 16, 2012, 10:42 am 10:42 am

How would this Obama propagandist know whether or not the attack was premeditated? The people on scene say it was AND the protesters came armed with AK-47s, RPGs and other weapons. That sounds like a premeditated act to me. Not only that, but I for one do not believe the Obama propaganda that this series of acts against US interests in the middle east was caused by a video that was posted on YouTube months ago. No, it was the FEDs QE3 that caused the Arab Sheikhs to order the atacks and protests. The video was used as a motivating force by the people who wanted to incite the violence. This I believe!

(article continued on next page) Comments? Does the author have it right?

Quote:

AS he suffocated to death at the US consulate in Benghazi on the 11th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the US, did ambassador Christopher Stevens understand why he and his fellow Americans were being murdered?

Stevens arrived in Benghazi at an early phase of US involvement in the rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi, a former US foe who had been neutered since 2004. But even then it was clear that the rebels with whom he worked included jihadist fighters associated with al-Qa'ida. Their significance became obvious when just after the regime fell in November last year, rebel forces hoisted the flag of al-Qa'ida over the courthouse in Benghazi.

Did Stevens understand what this meant? Perhaps. But his boss, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, certainly didn't. Following Tuesday's attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Clinton said, "Today, many Americans are asking - indeed, I asked myself - how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding the world can be."

Clinton then proclaimed with utter certainty there was nothing to be concerned about. "We must be clear-eyed, even in our grief. This was an attack by a small and savage group, not the people or government of Libya," she said.

Of course, what she failed to mention was that after the rebels felled Gaddafi's regime - with US support - they began imposing Islamic law over the country.

Clinton was not the only senior US official who didn't understand why Stevens and three other Americans were murdered or why the US consulate in Benghazi was reduced to a smouldering ruin.

The day after the murderous assault on the US consulate in Benghazi, and in the face of an ongoing mob assault on the US embassy in Cairo, and on US embassies in Yemen and Tunis, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called pastor Terry Jones in Florida and asked him to withdraw his support for a film that depicts Mohammed negatively. Dempsey's belief that a third-rate riff on Mohammed supported by a marginal figure in Florida is the cause of the terrorist attacks on US embassies is not simply shocking. It is devastating.

It means that the senior officer in the US military is of the opinion that the party to blame for the assaults on US government installations overseas was an American pastor. To prevent the recurrence of such incidents, freedom of speech must be constrained.

A word about the much mentioned film about Mohammed is in order. The film apparently was released about a year ago. It received little notice until last month when a Salafi television station in Egypt broadcast it to incite anti-American violence. If the film had never been created, they would have found another - equally ridiculous - pretext. And here we come to the nature of the attacks against America that occurred on the 11th anniversary of the September 11 jihadist attacks.

A cursory consideration of the events that are still taking place makes clear these were not acts of spontaneous rage about an amateur internet movie. They were premeditated. In Egypt, the mob was led by Muhammad al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qa'ida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The US's first official response to the assault on its embassy in Cairo came in the form of an embassy Twitter feed apologising to Muslims for the film.

The day before the attacks, al-Qa'ida released a video of Ayman al-Zawahiri in which he called for his co-religionists to attack the US in retribution for the killing in June of his second-in-command Abu Al Yahya al-Libi by a US drone in Pakistan. Zawahiri asked for the strongest act of retribution to be carried out in Libya.

As for the attack in Libya, it apparently came as no surprise to some US officials on the ground. In an online posting the night before he was killed, US Foreign Service information officer Sean Smith warned of the impending strike. Smith wrote, "Assuming we don't die tonight. We saw one of our 'police' that guard the compound taking pictures."

The co-ordinated, premeditated nature of the attack was self-evident. The assailants were armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns. They knew the location of the secret safe house to which the US consular officials fled. They laid ambush to a marine force sent to rescue the 37 Americans hiding at the safe house. Yet Clinton and Dempsey could not fathom why the attack occurred.

Like Dempsey, the US media was swift to focus the blame for the attacks on the film.

By Wednesday afternoon the media shifted the focus of discussion on the still ongoing attacks from the film to an all-out assault on Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for his temerity in attacking as "disgraceful" the administration's initial apologetic response to the attacks on the embassies.

Following the September 11 attacks, the US congress formed the bipartisan 9/11 Commission and charged it with determining the causes of the assault.

In the end, they claimed that the chief failure enabling the attacks was "one of imagination".

Unfortunately it wasn't that imagination failed America before September 11. It was that imagination reigned in America. And it still does. It's just the land of make-believe occupied by the US foreign policy elite has shifted.

Until September 11, 2001, the US foreign policy elite was of the opinion that the chief threat to US national security was the fact the US was a "hyperpower". That is, the chief threat to the US was the US itself.

After September 11, the US decided the main threat to the US was "terror". The perpetrators of terrorism were rarely mentioned, and when they were they were belittled as "marginal forces". Continued on the next page.

Re: Is the US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice lying or was she lied to?

Article continued from previous page

Quote:

Then president George W. Bush imagined a world where the actual enemies of the US were marginal forces in Islam. He then determined - based on nothing - that the masses of the Muslim world from Gaza to Iraq to Afghanistan and beyond were simply Jeffersonian democrats living under the jackboot.

If freed from tyranny, they would become liberal democrats nearly indistinguishable from regular Americans.

With President Barack Obama's inauguration, the imaginary world inhabited by the American foreign policy elite shifted again. Obama and his advisers agree that jihadist Islam is the predominant force in the Muslim world. But in their imaginary world, jihadist Islam is a good thing for America.

Hence, Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan is Obama's closest confidante in the Middle East despite his transformation of Turkey from a pro-Western secular republic into a pro-Iranian Islamic republic in which secularists are jailed without trial for years.

Hence Israel - the first target of jihadist Islam's bid for global supremacy - is a strategic burden rather than an ally to the US.

Hence the US abandoned its most stalwart ally in the Arab world, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and supported the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in the most strategically vital state in the Arab world.

Hence it supported a Libyan rebel force penetrated by al-Qa'ida.

Hence it is setting the stage for the reinstitution of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

It is impossible to know the thoughts that crossed Stevens's mind as he lay dying in Benghazi. But what is clear enough is that as long as imagination reigns supreme, freedom will be imperiled.

Caroline B. Glick is the senior contributing editor of The Jerusalem Post where this article first appeared.